Madam, – We, the Faculty of General Practitioners of South Tipperary, express our opposition to the HSE’s decision to close the 49-bed St Michael’s Acute Mental Health Unit in Clonmel. It is to be replaced by home treatment teams or the transfer of acute in-patients to a 50-bed unit in Kilkenny.
St Michael’s Unit operates at over 100 per cent capacity and is manned by a team of devoted professionals providing an excellent service with limited resources. For years, local consultants’ pleas for more resources have been repeatedly ignored and the unit has been allowed to run down.
We are unanimously opposed to the closure of the unit on the following grounds: 1. There has been no consultation with consultant psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, GPs, the patients or their families.
2. A proper option appraisal to evaluate how best to provide acute mental health services in line with the blueprint document Vision for Change has not been carried out.
3. The Mental Health Commission recently published a report into psychiatry services in South Tipperary entitled the Section 55 Inquiry. It recommends maintenance and repair of St Michael’s, not its closure.
4. We are not convinced that replacing acute units with home treatment teams is the correct approach for our predominantly rural county. Research in the UK has shown it to be of limited value in urban settings and its value in rural settings has yet to be properly evaluated. 5. Sending patients in need of acute in-patient care a long way from their families and local supports will have an adverse affect on them and increase detention rates and length of stay.
In light of recent events in Tallaght hospital, we believe it is more important than ever to advocate publicly for our patients. The HSE needs to listen to the stakeholders, something it has repeatedly failed to do. – Yours, etc,